Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Provided desks, e-mail accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.

Their compensation from the U.S. government for their efforts, which often involved 18-hour workdays, seven days a week and dangerous battlefield visits?

Zero dollars.

Although Fred Kagan said he and his wife wanted no pay in part to remain completely independent, the extraordinary arrangement raises new questions about the access and influence Petraeus accorded to civilian friends while he was running the Afghan war.

Petraeus allowed his biographer-turned-paramour, Paula Broadwell, to read sensitive documents and accompany him on trips. But the entree granted the Kagans, whose think-tank work has been embraced by Republican politicians, went even further. The four-star general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior U.S. military and civilian officials who served in the headquarters at the time.

“The extent of the couples involvement in Petraeuss headquarters was not known to senior White House and Pentagon officials involved in war policy, two of those officials said. More than a dozen senior military officers and civilian officials were interviewed for this article; most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.”

Hmmm . . . civilians in a war zone with privileged access to the troops and commanders and inside information . . . they sound like reporters . . . but they are independent military scholars who want the United States to win and are trying to help! In the NY Times telling, this is peculiar and somehow wrong.

They are NeoConservatives. Very prominant NeoCons, as is brother Robert Kagan and his wife. They are associated with the NeoCon foreign policy think tanks: Foreign Policy Initiative and American Enterprise Institute. Keep in mind, when the media says "hawk", they mean NeoCon.

They are also Coindinistas, strong supporters of counterinsurgency as a military strategy, which is what they they were advising Petraeus on.

Another advisor to Patreaus was John Nagl, who is also a Coindinista but is a Liberal Interventionist, who heads CNAS, the Liberal Interventionist think tank. Nagl is the Rhodes Scholar of Counterinsurgency and rewrote the counterinsurgeny manual for Petraeus before Nagl retired from the army.

NeoCons and Liberal Interventionists are often allies on foreign policy issues in that they are both Idealists in that they both subcribe to humanitarianism and nation building in foreign policy, but they differ in that NeoCons are unilateralists and Liberal Interventionists are multilateralists.

When will the dear leader give him his old job back as CIA director. Allen is right back on the job after embarrassing himself and everyone under him with those 10,000 emails to the young woman. Look for Patreaus to be reappointed CIA director. Obamagabe rewards incompetence.

Thanks for this review of the behind-the-scenes players. This insertion of “civilians” directly into the military chain of command without knowledge of the TinC and access to top security is troubling. It invites corrupt or foreign intelligence influence being beyond military and Congressional oversight and “off the books.”

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